


Allotropic

by NevillesGran



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: ...with Vex it's actually /, 5 + 1 Things, Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Gaslighting, Gen, Scars, Torture, but I decided my fic and my life would be better without his ENTIRE name written out SIX TIMES, just...Ripley being Ripley basically, technically all characters tagged show have a 'Percy & [XX]' relationship tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8741677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Allotropy (n) - The property of some chemical elements to exist in two or more different forms, in the same physical state.
  A 5+1 of assorted characters noting the connections between Tal'Dorei's most notorious gunslingers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to read this but avoid the LITERAL TORTURE, just skip the fifth scene. Skip it entirely. Too horrible; don't read: Anna gets to work breaking in a potential new lab assistant, emphasis on "breaking", and Percy has the worst pop quiz of his life.
> 
> Edited but unbeta'ed, so I apologize if there are any typos, and I'd love to fix them if you point them out.

Kynan had many reasons to be cautious of Percival de Rolo. Most of then had to do with the fact that he had helped— _successfully_ helped—kill the man. Nearly killed most of his friends as well. No matter how hard Kynan worked in defense of Whitestone, no matter bafflingly kind everyone in Vox Machina continued to be, he didn’t think that was the sort of thing that could be forgiven. Didn’t think it was the sort of thing that _should_ be forgiven.

The others reasons…

Kynan had only ever met one other person who moved that fast, could draw, aim, fire, reload, and fire again and again before he, Kynan, even noticed there was a danger. One other person who got that particular glint in their eye when faced with a new obstacle, like the world had presented them a challenge and she would make it rue the day it dared. And only one person, only Percival ever, who made her smile with appreciation, admiration (“Her”, Kynan sometimes thought, capitalized with significance.) Made Her murmur, “Oh, _very_ clever” as she eavesdropped on Vox Machina through the stone she wore on a chain around her neck.

At first, Kynan had thought that twist of her lips was resentment, or hatred. A touch of fear, even—she certainly instructed him to be warier of Percival than the rest of Vox Machina. After all, Kynan knew what Ripley looked like when she was proud of someone (other than herself.) She was sparse with praise, but there was her approving smile when he stole those maps in Vasselheim, or her hand on his shoulder the first time he hit the target with the gun she had given him. She entrusted him with Whisper, a dagger of the gods for which their whole party risked their lives. Her dark expression as she listened to Percival negotiate with the Clasp, glare down a demon in a sword, arrange a trap to kill a dragon, that was….

Then they were in the jungle on Glintshore, all face-to-face, and it was clear there was far too much fondness in her voice for that twist to be mere _resentment_. It looked a great deal like her pride in her own inventions, but that just made it more recognizable. It almost gave Kynan more pause than Vax shouting his name across the crater.

Days, weeks, months later, Kynan felt sick to his stomach sometimes, remembering just Ripley’s false approbation. He wasn’t sure what to think of a man for whom it had been real.

/

Keyleth was a little grateful to find Percy outside, on the castle walls overlooking Whitestone. It was always harder to talk to him in his workshop. Not about little things, much less research, planning, and the endless series of inventions she got to help him build. But it was so very _Percy_ in there. It got hard to hold her thoughts in order for the other stuff, emotions and ideology and…stuff.

The castle walls were a good compromise. It was Whitestone, so it was inherently Percy—and wasn’t it _good_ to see him so comfortable, resting his elbows on the battlement, watching the bustling city below. Oh, sure, a slight tension in his shoulders said he was frowning, and the way his hand twitched, it was probably with concentration as he planned how to add more catapults to the city walls or something. Catapults that shot lightning. But that was just Percy at the default. There was no smoke wreathing that hand, and so much less ice and emptiness in his gaze than the first time they had come to Whitestone. And if the dragons thus far had taught them one thing, it was that you could never have too much air support.

And it was outside, high up in the crisp, bright, sky, with the forest on one side, the mountains on the other, and the sea just barely visible in the distance. The scents of snow and stone and fresh growth mingled under the scry-proof barrier: early spring in the north, in the city her best friend called home. So Keyleth was just fine, too.

She leaned back against the parapet, letting her long hair drop over the edge. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Percy’s smile was warm, if a little distracted. Catapults, Keyleth figured, or ballistae that shot giant versions of Vex’s explosive arrows. Show those lizards who could _really_ shoot fire.

That was a conversation for later, in the workshop.

“Um.” She glanced over her shoulder at the city below. The snow threw sunlight back at her, aided and abetted by the eponymous white stone. “Nice weather we’re having.”

“It’s warm for this time of year.” Though he pulled his cloak a little tighter at the words. “Makes a nice change. Bodes well for the crops, too.”

“Uh-huh.” Keyleth wasn’t wearing a cloak, or even long sleeves. it took a lot to make an Ashari cold.

Oh, fuck it.

“Percy, we need to talk about Glintshore.”

The thing was, _Keyleth_ didn’t want to talk about Glintshore. Didn’t want to think about it at all, really. She found herself reaching over and gripping Percy’s hand just to know it warm and alive.

But Percy just nodded, and squeezed her hand back like he knew she needed to feel the strength in his fingers. “I thought we might.”

“Not you—I mean before, when—wait, what?”

She eyed her friend, who looked back calmly with sharp blue eyes and the smile exchanged for something neat and unreadable, and she sighed. “Of course you did.”

That won back at least a wry twist of the lips. “I’ll admit, I thought it would be Vax who came to take me to task.”

“You do invite it, sometimes.”

He gave an ironic bow, and made it look elegant because he was Percy. “I try.”

“You succ—dammit, Percy!” Keyleth kneaded her eyes with one hand. A breeze picked at her hair. “Why did you let her talk? You’d been saying all day, all the day before, that she was too dangerous. That you’d made a horrible mistake in letting her get away before. Then she offers to talk, and obviously it was a trap anyway, but you go and do it again! Why?”

“The usual reasons,” he said slowly. Adjusted his glasses, and the sit of Cabal’s Ruin on his shoulders. “I thought she might know something useful. Important. I thought I had her under control, when I clearly did not.”

The answer sounded more than a little rehearsed, but Percy’s bitterness was real. Keyleth fought the urge to squeeze his hand again (she was still holding it.)

“That does sound like you,” she said instead. Trying to match his neutrality.

Percy used his other hand to prop up his chin, and stare out at the cloudless sky. “I think I might have enjoyed it, too. Just a little. Holding her, taunting her.” He was much, much better at sounding detached. “I’d forgiven her, I swear to you, that happened before the fight. I think. But there was a certain…satisfaction.”

His voice dropped on the last word, quiet and low. Keyleth…

Months ago—just two; two short months—she had upbraided him for seeking vengeance. Two months ago when, half a world away, Raishan had been opening the portal to the Fire Plan and murdering a quarter of Keyleth’s people. And then the dragon had smiled and called her “child.”

Keyleth’s fist clenched around Percy’s. “I’m glad she’s dead. She was—she wasn’t worth—she deserved—”

Percy snorted, his humor utterly black. “ _I’m_ glad she’s dead.” His voice finally broke as he tipped his head sideways onto Keyleth’s shoulder, leaking exhaustion and pain. “I’m so glad, and I’m not even sure if it’s because she tortured me, or the threat she posed to the world, or—” He rubbed his fist hard over his eyes. “Or just that those were both representative of a greater problem that she was better than I was, smarter and faster and just…I mean, she’s the worst, obviously, but only in exactly the same fucking ways I am, and I think there’s some part of me that’s glad she’s dead just because it means I _win_.”

Keyleth had no response but to lay her head on his. His hair was soft.

“At least we know we’re awful people,” she sighed. And the view was still beautiful. “That counts for something, right?”

This time Percy’s chuckle had a little real warmth in it again. “ _You_ are _not_.”

/

Cassandra never used to have trouble sleeping.

No, that wasn’t true. She’s always been wakeful at night. But when she was young, it was because she was bouncing with energy—because the moon and stars called, because the world was exciting and new when it was full of shadows. Because all her siblings got to stay up longer, so why couldn’t she?

Cassandra didn’t have any siblings anymore. She was still restless in the dark, but it was nightmares that sent her wandering the halls of Whitestone Castle hours after midnight.

She was baffled that she was allowed to wander so. Then again, she couldn’t be much of a threat. And no doubt some guard or another would stop her if she tried to actually leave the castle. But what was there for her outside, anyway? Only a little more death than could be found indoors.

Still, she avoided the wing with her parents’ bedroom. Her parents’ former bedroom. It was pointless—Lord Briarwood, at least, would be up and about, and his Lady usually followed suit. But Cassandra’s life was more or less a series of feeble attempts.

There was a light in Percival’s old workshop. For a sliver of a second, Cassandra got to imagine the nightmare that sent her wandering had actually been the entire last four years: she was half a foot shorter, no white in her hair, and she and her second-eldest brother were both about to get caught for staying up so late past bedtime. Percy would get off easy, because he was nearly twenty and expected to (mis)manage his own sleep schedule; Cassandra, twelve, would be dragged back to her bed with no recourse or opportunity for explanation, even though she had _tried_ to sleep.

Only the barest sliver of a second. She paused outside the open door’s spill of lantern light. It was Ripley, of course. Dr. Anna Ripley who was certainly not Cassandra’s brother; who had, in fact, spent about six days slowly torturing him. On the heels of helping kill the rest of Cassandra’s family, and just before getting to work slowly destroying the very stone of her city. Cassandra had picked the locks on his chains and…

Ripley was picking through a rack of dusty alchemy tools.

“Ah, Cassandra.” The good doctor looked up, seeing her even through the shadows in which Cassandra skulked. “I don’t suppose you know if your brother had any silver of aconite, and where he might have kept it?”

Cassandra stared at her. It was not the question she had been expecting, were she to be caught.

But there _was_ something Percyish about Ripley, for the moment. The distracted air of a tinkerer at work. Wisps of hair escaped her usually tight bun, splashes of things Cassandra couldn’t name dotted her coat, and she seemed utterly unconcerned that it was closer to dawn than to midnight.

“No?” Cassandra finally managed. She didn’t know was ‘silver of aconite’ was, either.

Ripley rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh, a working woman dealing with one of life’s innumerable little frustrations. “I shall have to order it from Westruun, then. That will set us back nearly a week.”

Her gaze settled on Cassandra again, and sharpened. “What are you doing up?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Ripley didn’t smile.

Delilah would have, sickly sweet, and swept Cassandra into her arms to usher her back to bed. Sylas’s syrup was thicker, darker, more overtly commanding—he would have escorted her to her room and assured her, canines sharp and obvious, that there was no reason to fear the dark. (Percy, while she was on the subject, would have just sighed with annoyance and told her to go.)

Ripley seemed to analyze her like a troublesome equation, calculating something long and obscure before finally nodding. “Understandable.”

Her countenance did not invite reply, but as she picked up the lantern and swept past Cassandra into the hallway, she added, “I’ve had a rather long day as well. You may join me in the kitchen for a drink, if you’d like, before I return to my house.”

Ripley’s lantern broke the shadows Cassandra used to love, and warmed the castle’s moonlit white stone to death. Or from it, perhaps. Companionship with alcohol and without talking sounded…pleasant, even with such a companion.

Cassandra fell into step behind her. One further difference between Dr. Anna Ripley and Percival: Ripley, when given a choice, was at least _here_.

/

Every now and then, Pike was struck, in the middle of battle, with ferocious frustration with her friends’ proclivity for getting hurt. Selfish frustration, because it wasn’t worry for them but impatience for on her own behalf. Pike wanted to fight monsters herself, dang it, not spend her entire life darting around battlefields to heal people too stupid to dodge the slice of an axe, or a wyvern’s fiery breath, or a chimera’s swinging tail.

Nonetheless, she was at Percy’s side almost before he fell. He’d only been with the SHITs for a couple months, but he’d picked up quick on the trick of being too busy shooting at the lion head to notice the serpentine tail snaking around his back. In this specific fight. Metaphorically, otherwise. Pike, fortunately, had seen the blow coming from above, while getting bucked off the goat-part’s back.

It wasn’t a pretty puncture. The way the blood was bubbling, Pike bet it was poisoned, too.

She flipped him over with ease, more than practiced in handling the unconscious bodies of people twice her size. Something that looked this bad three layers out would want skin-to-skin contact, so next the coat got pulled back, and the shirt and fancy noble undershirt ripped further open than even the chimera had left them. Then she sucked her teeth at the jagged, sizzling sight that met her eyes. Definitely poisoned. Pike hated being right.

The chimera was distracted, at least, by Keyleth’s fireballs and Vax attempting to stab it in the eyes. She had a moment to concentrate on the task at hand. It was a messy wound, and Percy was shaking as the poison swept through his system, but Pike had been doing this for half her life. She gripped her amulet and prayed, and familiar golden warmth swept down her arms. It washed over Percy’s back, clearing away the blood and patching up the cut, or at least covering it with grimy scab, and Pike sent a silent thanks to her goddess. Percy stopped shaking.

And something else caught Pike’s eye. A scar curling over Percy’s hip, the signature pale stroke of something deep that had been healed supernaturally fast. The chimera’s gash would be a similar white scratch in a couple days, or rather, a sunburst. This was more of a series of curved lines.

“Pike?” Percy’s voice was muffled by the dirt, but he was conscious again.

“I’ve got you,” she replied automatically, and patted him reassuringly on the back. Careful to avoid the fresh scab.

It was kinda sweet that he could recognize her touch, when they hadn’t known each other that long. Hadn’t really gotten a chance to, with all the running around and nearly dying since Stillben. And good as he could be in a fight, off the battlefield, Percy wasn’t the most open person.

For instance, Pike kept staring at the scar on his hip and wondering why it looked so very much like someone had carved their initials into his skin. _A.R._ , in graceful, swooping cursive. She started to inch her fingers towards it—

Percy jerked away from her, twitched his long blue coat back over the exposed skin and rolled on his back for good measure. For a moment, he glared at her with something like the rage she was used to seeing in Grog, but with fear mixed in.

Then his eyes widened, clear blue and scared and intent, and he had his pistol back in the air even before he shouted, “Duck!” Pike threw herself flat and heard the crack of the bullets as they flew over her head and slammed into the chimera’s returning tail. Blood splattered over her back.

That was the monster’s last assault. She raised her head again to the crash of its fall, Grog’s axe buried deep in its neck.

“Um, thank you. For that healing.” Percy was still a little unsteady, but he offered her a hand up anyway. With the other, he tucked his gun back into his belt and adjusted the sit of his coat, pulling it more tightly closed.

Well, they all had things they’d rather not talk about. Pike tried to put that in her face as she beamed back at him, and accepted the gentle tug back to her feet. “It’s what I do! Thank you for the warning, and the excellent shot!”

Percy shrugged, but a smidgen of the wariness disappeared from his eyes. “That’s what I do.”

That, figured the cleric of Sarenrae, was a start.

/

“I think we’ll try something new today, Percival. Would you like that?”

Percy couldn’t muster any opinion save a vague instinctive dread, rooted deep in his animal hindbrain where he still wanted to survive this. Otherwise, if he had learned one thing in the last week, it was that he could not stop Anna Ripley from doing a single damn thing she wanted to him, so there was little point in having thoughts about it. It was freeing, in a way. Restful.

He had also learned that she really, _really_ liked getting her questions answered. “I doubt it,” he said honestly.

“Oh, come on.” A woman twice his age should not sound that teasingly playful as she leaned over and pressed her palm into an open cut on his chest, tearing apart the muscles that protected his lungs. “Show some enthusiasm, Percy!”

He gave a dutiful, hoarse scream and choked out, “I’m delighted.” Dr. Ripley gave him a satisfied smile and removed her hand.

So today, then, was one of those days where she wanted to hear what she wanted to hear, rather than the truth. That was very important to know.

Or maybe one of those nights, or mornings or evenings or afternoons—he had little idea anymore. Ripley always told him, but they seemed to go out of order, and he never knew how long he’d been unconscious. He’d long-since decided to just take her word for it every time. He couldn’t always remember what she’d said last, anyway.

Ripley plucked a sheaf of papers from a nearby counter and perched on Percy’s slab, just above the hip she had signed yesterday (or so.) She carefully tucked her coat beneath her, first—not avoiding the blood for her own sensibilities, Percy knew, but in adherence to something like proper laboratory procedure.

“What is this supposed to be?”

She held one of the pages above his head. He craned his neck to read it—it was hard, with his hands cuffed above his head and one shoulder dislocated. It burned when he moved. And Ripley had brought several different lamps down to light her work, but Percy had been missing his glasses since That Night.

 _What, you can’t figure it out yourself?_ lay on the tip of his tongue. That would be very, very stupid.

“It’s a dagger sheath I was designing for my sister. To hide under a dress and shoot the blade into her hand when she flexed her wrist.” Vesper wouldn’t need it now.

“Hm.” Ripley showed him another. “And this?”

Another paper from his workshop—they all were, he thought. This one covered in scratched-out chemical formulae and doodles of clockwork.

She was harder to read. Truth after all, then? Safest.

“I was trying to come up with a more elegant explanation for Neeram’s Third Law of Luminescence.” Why, why, why did she want to know.

“And how does one isolate phosphorus? Off the top of your head.” She smiled like it was a joke, funny because there was no other way for him to know something when he was handcuffed to a table in a dungeon chamber he hadn’t known still held equipment before a week (or so) ago.

Percy gaped at her. “Why—ah!”

The shout was for her scalpel scraping against a not-at-all-healed burn on his collarbone, peeling back another layer of skin. He could feel the tears spilling from his eyes again. It was so much _fun_ now that she barely had to make new injuries.

“Phosphorus, Percival,” she ordered.

“Easiest is to distill urine to a salt,” he said quickly, because– this couldn’t be important, she just wanted to hear the answer; and he did know it. “Grind it fine and mix with sodium sulfate powder in a one-two ratio, salt to sulfate. Douse, submerge, in ethanol, let sit for twenty-four hours, evaporate over warm sand and heat the residue from that for another twenty-four hours, starting with low heat and slowly increasing. The phosphorus drips off.”

Ripley pursed her lips. “I suppose that will do. If you have a triangle with sides of two-point-three, three-point-eight, and five inches, what is the measure of the least acute angle?”

 _Why?_ he didn’t ask. He could do a little geometry in his head. Trigonometry. Algebra, really. Square…

Not fast enough. Ripley stood, sidled along the table, her scalpel trailing warningly up his side. “Percy…”

The blade jumped up to his head, slid too close to his eye; leapt across to his arm, tickling up oh gods, please, not his hands again—

“Please!” he blurted out. “I can’t—I don’t have a chart of cosines in my head. Give me a—”

The scalpel nicked the table when it went through his hand, already broken and bloodied, and Percy shouted hoarsely again. His throat had been sore for days. Gods, it _hurt_.

Dr. Ripley _tsk_ ed as he whimpered in pain. “Answer the question.”

“Twenty-five…nineteen-point-seven-one, fourteen-point-four—so five-point-three, no, two-seven—”

Too late. Wrong answers, even just steps, earned the scalpel twisting 180º. Skin groaned, muscles tore, bone screeched.

“Please,” Percy begged, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. “Please stop, please.” She liked that; she usually liked that when he begged.

A push in the wrong direction on his dislocated shoulder. Not actual fire—she’d used that yesterday. Or so.

“Answer the question, Percy.”

“…Over two by…eight…seventeen-point-four-eight; five-point-two-seven over seventeen-point-four eight; reverse cos to...to…”

And that was how it went for hours. He babbled desperately and she hurt him when he wasn’t fast enough, when he got the answers wrong. Through mathematics and engineering and alchemy, and kinematics and biology—she had him identify the organs under the skin she marked, and how they would break if she cut deep enough. He wasn’t as good at that. He’d never studied much biology. It hurt. Sometimes history and literature tossed in like jokes, except the punchlines were carved in his skin. Hours or minutes or days; Percy had no idea anymore. There was no light except what she brought down.

Until finally, _finally_ , Ripley sat again. Rested her tools on the table, set her hands behind her (in his blood but not on his body) and leaned on them, over him, to stretch her back. Smiled with what Percy thought was satisfaction, even pleasure. Like a cat.

“It is so nice to talk to someone of real intellect,” she purred. Yes, definitely pleasure. That was—that was good. That was good, Percy thought muzzily. Maybe they could stop.

She ruffled his hair, doing nothing to change the amount of blood in it. “Yes, we can stop now.”

Oh, he was still babbling, under his breath. Of course she heard.

“Good,” he managed, deliberately this time.

“The sciences are so underappreciated, don’t you think?”

He really did think that. That pre-dated her. This. Hell. Right? Yes. Only, his family would never tease him about it again.

His throat was very sore. It took several agonizing swallows to respond. “Yes.”

Again Dr. Ripley’s fingers combed through his hair, gently, and then she was off the table and fishing through her bag on the counter. Beside the bloodied tools.

“You’ve done very well this evening,” she tossed over her shoulder, and Percy found himself catching the praise like a starving man at a loaf of bread. (He hadn’t eaten much, either.) He tracked her movements desperately through blurred eyes, especially when she returned with a vial of golden liquid. She tipped it down his throat.

The healing potion flowed through his body like a sigh, settling bone and muscle back into place and stifling the sting in his screaming skin. Partly. Even his mind jumped back into motion.

He eyed Ripley warily, and she smiled down at him, lips thin but still looking something disturbingly like fond.

“I’ll give you a choice tonight, Percy.” And very pleased with herself, or with…something. “Would you like to stay here for the night, or go back to your cell?”

A trap, or rather, another test. No objective right answer, which meant she still wanted to hear what she wanted.

“Here?” he hazarded.

Her smile widened, relatively without cruelty. Percy fought not to sigh in relief. (The cell was not welcome, either. Here there was pain, but there there were bodies, bloodless and broken and accusing his helplessness.)

“Very well,” Ripley said crisply, and held another vial to his lips. He recognized the whiff of a sleeping potion. “Drink up.”

He didn’t really have a choice.

/

Sometimes Vex remembered to be uncomfortable with everything Percy gave her.

Not, _ever_ , in the sense that it made anything between them less than real. Never that. Vex might exchange a wink for a favor, or more, but she wasn’t Vax. She could keep her heart separate of her business.

But what a heart. Vex was selfish, so very selfish. Maybe from years where seizing and hoarding every scrap of food and gold and shelter was what kept her, Vax, and Trinket alive, or maybe just inherently, since she was born. She always wanted more. And Percy so astonishingly did not.

It came from privilege, Vex was perfectly aware of that—it was easy to give things away when you were born with everything. But surely at some point you had to run out, and Percy kept giving anyway. He’d retreat to his workshop and build more things to give. To Whitestone, to Vox Machina, and to Vex most of all—arrows with irreplicable clever tricks, every piece of gold, a title and regard and a home. And every little thing: stolen kisses, hidden smiles, the breath of pause as he waited for her to rein in his latest plan within a plan within a plan.

At some point, surely, even Vex’s freely given heart was not worth all that.

It all spilled out one evening in his workshop in Whitestone, long after dragons and demons and even gods had been defeated. Or, not long perhaps—not even a week, perhaps. Certainly not a month. Little enough time that every day still felt like a miraculously gained lifetime. And Percy had spent this day’s crafting Vex a beautiful silver brooch, and she clutched it tight (so very selfish) and burst into tears as she tried to explain that this, somehow, was finally too much.

Percy, bless his fucking heart (which he’d also given her), didn’t argue. He held her by the arm and sat her gently on the bed, sat with her and let the words and tears fall between them. (She had insisted he get a proper bed in here, that even if it decreased his incentive to return to the bedroom, at least he’d get a better night’s sleep than if he crashed on the spare workbench that used to take up the space.)

“Hey,” he said finally. Gently. Uncurled her hand in her lap, clenched around the brooch, and said, “Look at that, one more time.”

Vex looked. It was Trinket, every tuft in place, etched in perfect silver. He was roaring with pride (she could tell), and there was a shining topaz in his jaws—no particularly precious stone but finely cut, and a perfect compliment in shade to the feathers behind Vex’s ear (and, she couldn’t help but notice, the blue of the de Rolo family crest.) It was utterly decorative, nothing like clever arrows or ever-useful gold, and it was the most perfect, lovely, beautiful thing anyone had ever given her.

“That,” Percy murmured. “That’s what you give me.”

“What?”

Percy’s blue eyes rivaled the brooch for shine, and he traced her lips with one reverent finger. She felt it dip down and up again.

“That smile. I would do absolutely boneheaded things for that smile.” He returned it easily. “I’m quite sure I already have. All without a single ounce of regret.”

Vex put a hand over his, resting now against her dimple. It felt like a regular smile to her. Just her usual helpless delight at being given a lovely thing.

Percy kissed the back of her palm, still watching her like she was the only priceless thing in this workshop full of one-of-a-kind inventions. Then he pulled back, dropping his hand from her face (catching hers as it followed his down.)

“Now, however, you really ought to be under these covers.”

Vex let her vulnerable smile slide into a more comfortable smirk. “With you, darling? _Well_ …”

“Or to use the bed for its intended purpose,” Percy said pointedly, “considering Pike, Yennan, _and_ Allura’s professional opinions that you still need rest.”

She glanced at guiltily at her side, still swathed, under her shirt, in bandages and healing poultices. Oh, that. Silly little cursed wound, leftover from all those gods and demons and dragons. It barely bothered her, really.

She yawned anyway. Damned power of suggestion.

“You’ll join me?” She set the beautiful brooch on the shelf above the pillow, where his glasses usually went.

“As soon as I’ve cleaned up a little,” he promised.

It was very easy to fall asleep to Percy tinkering. “Cleaning”, yes, but the man could not be in his workshop for more than thirty seconds without setting to fixing something. Vex didn’t mind. The warmth of the lantern, the soft smell of grease, the scratching of pencil on paper and the _ting!_ of metal being twisted into shape—it was the moonlight and musk and the music of whispered wind through leaves that she used to so love. Still loved, always—but her heart had changed hands. This was home, now.

She woke, perhaps, because the music paused. But Percy was still at his workbench, staring down at a gun in his hands. The lantern had dimmed as well, but Vex’s sharp eyes easily picked out the pistol’s familiar harsh lines and flecks of snow-white stone.

She slipped from the bed and padded silently across the room, to watch over his shoulder as he ran his thumb along Retort’s barrel. Along the lines of Ripley’s signature, the one once enchanted to spy on them for months, on the gun in which a fiend had held and tortured his soul for nearly a day. Percy touched it with the same delicacy he had given Vex’s lips, but his own were now twisted into a grimace, his back hunched and his muscles taut.

Vex brushed against his shoulder to let him know she was there, before she reached down and caught his hand in hers. Gods and dragons…and still, perhaps, a few demons left lingering.

She curled their twined fingers away from the gun and said, “I don’t think she ever gave anything to anyone. Certainly not for a smile.”

Percy leaned back into her with a tired sigh, and she slipped an arm around his chest to hold him there. He was warm, and his hair shone softly in the dim yellow light.

“No,” he admitted. “Probably not.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've written a lot of painful fic in my day, and I think the last line of Cassandra's section might honestly be the saddest thing I've ever typed.
> 
> All the numbers Percy babbles are real steps in the process of solving that problem, though he sometimes goes so fast he doesn't say the whole number at each step. Ripley was following close enough to know the difference between that and a genuine error.
> 
> Credit to sodiumlamp.tumblr.com for teaching me how late alchemists discovered and isolated the element phosphorus.


End file.
